Page 95 of Murder in the Tea Leaves

“Bullwacky,” Usher snorted. “Tony, move the old guy over here. In fact, put ’em both in the corner, and tie them up.”

“Old guy?” Drayton muttered as he stumbled forward.

Tony, the motorcycle rider, herded Theodosia and Drayton into the corner of the garage. Then, as Usher pointed his gun at them, Tony sat them down on the cement floor and tied them up. First their hands, then their feet, then their hands to their feet, until they were trussed up like a couple of Thanksgiving turkeys.

“You don’t have to do this,” Theodosia said to Tony. He was young, maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with dark curly hair and a chiseled face. “We’ll tell the police you weren’t involved.”

“That we never even saw you,” Drayton added.

Tony ignored them both.

“What are you gonna do with them?” Tony asked Usher. “Leave them here to starve?”

“Wouldn’t work,” Usher said. “What we need to do is get rid of them tonight. Take the boat out again and dump them ten miles offshore.” His eyes darted back to Theodosia and Drayton. “Think you folks can swim that far? In a fast current in a cold ocean? Somehow I doubt it.”

“This is gonna take all night,” Tony said. There was a hint of peevishness in his voice.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get paid,” Usher snapped. “What we gotta do first is get rid of today’s haul.”

“Take it to the same place?”

“No, I’ve got a storage locker in North Charleston that’s safer. We’ll stash everything there, then come back and pick up these two. Take them for a nice moonlight cruise.”

“Ha,” Tony chortled.

Usher walked over and nudged Theodosia’s leg with the toe of his shoe. “You sit tight, okay? You and your nosy sidekick.”

Theodosia lifted her chin and said, “Did you kill Josh Morro? Because he figured out what you were up to?”

Usher winked at her. “We might have had a hand in that. Tony here is a master electrician. All I had to do was set up the chair and jam the circuits. Clever, yes?”

“Not really,” Theodosia said.

“Did you kill Helene as well?” Drayton asked.

Usher’s smile turned cold. “She was a nice lady. Until she got a little too curious for her own good. Wanted to know where I was sourcing my marine artifacts. Yup, curiosity killed the cat, kind of like what’s going to happen to the two of you.” He turned to Tony and said, “Let’s go. Make our drop and get back here.”

“Wait a minute,” Theodosia said. “So it wasn’t about the completion guaranty?”

Usher smirked. “That’s still my ace in the hole. In case things don’t work out.”

* * *

Usher and Tony left in the Lexus, leaving Theodosia and Drayton sitting in a dark corner of a garage that smelled like motor oil and mouse droppings.

“Do you think we should shout for help?” Drayton asked somewhat facetiously.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Theodosia said.

So they spent the next fifteen minutes shouting and screaming, pleading for someone to open the door and let them out.

Didn’t happen.

“I don’t think anybody can hear us through all this cinder block,” Theodosia said. “Got a better idea?”

“Do you think we could kind of hump and bump our way over to the door and open it ourselves?”

“It’s worth a try,” Theodosia said.

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